CHAPTER 4

On the first Saturday in August, Sam angled into his regular parking spot in front of the Otasco store. A two-story brick building with a white cast-iron front, it sat smack in the middle of a three-block stretch that most Unionville residents called “uptown.”Although his watch said only a few minutes past seven, it seemed later. He liked to open early and catch folks on their way to work. Not a lot stopped in but he always felt better getting a head start on the day.

“Can I do the lock, Daddy?” Billy asked, jumping out of the truck.

“Here you go,” Sam said, tossing the keys. “Let’s get a move on.” He brought Billy to the store nearly every Saturday and on most weekdays during the summer. The chores he did for a weekly allowance of a dollar and a fifty cents saved Sam time and helped Billy learn hard work.

Clad in a white t-shirt, jeans, and black, high-top tennis shoes, he swung open one of the two big glass doors and breathed in the smell of oiled floors, rubber tires, and car batteries. Sam, in a plaid shirt and khaki pants, walked up the center aisle between rows of Ben-Hur, Leonard, and TempMaster appliances. As he went, he pulled strings hanging from light fixtures near the high, pressed-tin ceiling, and fluorescent bulbs lit the store. Farther back, he switched on a huge electric fan mounted on a chrome stand and turned left under an open stairway into a partially enclosed office with a counter facing the sales floor. Here he unlocked the safe and started counting out change for the cash register, which sat on a long wrapping table out in the sales area. Billy fetched a broom from a closet under the stairs, swept the sidewalk, and began moving display goods outside, in front of tall plate glass windows flanking the entrance.

By the time Sam finished with the cash register, Billy had put out an assortment of Brunswick automobile tires, Lawn-Boy power mowers, and Flying-O bicycles. Then Sam helped him set up a tool rack loaded with rakes, hoes, and shovels. Neal O’Brien, who owned City Hardware across the street next to Farmers State Bank, also displayed merchandise this way. Wouldbe customers could stop and inspect the tread on a tire, get the feel of an ax, or check the bend of a fishing pole, and no one ever harmed anything.

As the Tates worked, steam began rising from Leon Jackson’s dry-cleaning shop behind the bank. Fred Vestal parked his Chevy panel truck in front of his furniture store across the alley from the bank, got out, and waved. Sam and Billy waved back, and as they did, they saw skinny Jim Ed Davis pull his battered red-and-black International pickup into the back of the alley and go in the side door of the bank.

“I wonder what old Jim Ed is doing over there at this hour?” Sam said. “He couldn’t be working.”

Bank president Horace Bowman’s black Lincoln was parked out front but he was always in early. In addition to being the majority stockholder in the bank, he owned Bowman Lumber Company and was by far the richest man in Unionville. He put in long hours watching over his holdings and Sam owed him more money than he liked to remember. Jim Ed, on the other hand, had not worked a lick since coming home from World War II, having been a Navy cook. He lived in a rundown house on a hundred acres west of town, and other than occasionally selling some timber, he had no visible means of support. Some folks said he lived off money his daddy left from years of selling moonshine whiskey distilled in old car radiators.

“Maybe he’s trying to borrow money without anybody knowing it,” Billy said.

“Yeah, maybe, but he’s gon’ be disappointed. Mr. Bowman doesn’t lend money to the likes of Jim Ed any time of day.”

“Hey,” Billy said, pointing, “here comes Scoggins.”

“Mr. Scoggins, son,” Sam said.

“Okay, Daddy.”

Father and son watched Doyle Scoggins drive past in his brand-new Chevy hardtop, tail fins glittering in the sun. The Tates waved but Scoggins was fiddling with something on his dashboard and did not see them. A slender, slump-shouldered man who always wore long-sleeved khaki shirts and matching pants, he had worked the early shift at the Southwestern Chemical plant up in El Dorado for so long that even on his days off, he got up and went to Emmett’s Café for coffee. The only difference was that on those occasions he left his old GMC work truck at home and drove what he called his “Sunday-goto-meeting car,” despite no one ever having known him to go to church, or much of anywhere else except uptown on Saturdays. The Chevy was his only luxury and he kept it shined up like a gold watch. A few weeks back, he had let Billy sit in the driver’s seat and breathe in the new-car smell.

Just as the Tates were setting out the last of their display goods, two pulpwood trucks passed through town heading south for some rural timber-cutting site. Billy turned just in time to see them. They had “O. H. Trucking” painted on the doors.

“There goes Otis, Daddy,” Billy said, pointing to Otis Henderson, shortstop for the Black Tigers.

“Yep,” Sam said, as Otis waved.

Finished with opening the store, Sam and Billy exchanged grins of satisfaction and turned to other chores.